The present invention relates to digital media distribution, and more particularly to efficient archiving and dearchiving in a digital media distributor (DMD) system.
Although broadcasters have sophisticated systems for inserting national commercials into a program stream, including integrated traffic and billing systems, there are numerous obstacles to implementing a system to insert local commercials at small markets into a national program feed distributed by satellite. Until now, such local spot insertion advertising was the responsibility of the local broadcaster or cable operator.
Inserting local advertising poses several nontrivial technical, logistical and business challenges. First, literally hundreds of widely distributed local operators (or affiliates) would need to receive the commercials; ad agencies would have to ship analog tapes to hundreds of organizations, with different traffic and billing systems. These tapes would need to be tested for quality assurance, tracked, and stored until needed. They would then have to be distributed to video tape recorders and readied for computer controlled playout (analog) at the proper time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Such infrastructure generally exists at well-funded affiliates in major markets but is nonexistent and prohibitively expensive for smaller operators or affiliates in small markets.
Managing such tapes with ads for local commercials and inserting them properly into the program feed is a complex undertaking not well-suited for the smaller operators, especially for channels with smaller audiences in smaller markets. A quality broadcast involves more than excellent program material; it must provide seamless insertion of national and local advertisements, promotions, and station identifications.
Equally important is the ability to maintain the integrity of the national television programming. Centralized control of the channel""s programming (playout) is required to prevent local affiliates from tampering with the programming.
A need exists for a digital media distributor system with efficient archiving and dearchiving. The present invention addresses such a need.
Aspects for efficient archiving and dearchiving for a digital media distributor are presented. The aspects include a tape library for storing archived storage items, an archive server coupled to and managing the tape library, and a central site server coupled to the archive server and including a stage manager component. The stage manager component performs an archive operation to the archive server in response to a store request by grouping storage items according to predefined group categories and performs a dearchive operation from the archive server in response to a retrieve request by sorting storage items according to storage order within the predefined group categories.
Through the present invention, an approach to archiving/dearchiving spot files to/from a tape library is provided that achieves high speed and thus better efficiency for a digital media distributor system. The approach utilizes the storage of objects which pertain to a single group, i.e., a single group of affiliates, on a single tape. Further, when objects are retrieved from tape, objects which belong to a single group are bundled into a single request, such that multiple reads can be done on a single tape in a highly efficient manner (i.e., without moving the tape arms unnecessarily). These and other advantages of the present invention will be more fully understood in conjunction with the following detailed description and accompanying drawings.